Recent literature on Truman's Atomic Bomb decision: A search for middle ground

Diplomatic History

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 311-334

  Walker, J Samuel ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 17344363069     PISSN: 01452096     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7709.2005.00476.x     Document Type: Article

References (134)

1. Washington Post, 25 February 1999.
2. For discussions of the controversy over the proposed Enola Gay exhibit from many different perspectives, see Tony Capaccio and Uday Mohan, "Missing the Target," American Journalism Review 17 (July/ August 1995): 18-26;
3. "History and the Public: What Can We Handle? A Round Table about History after the Enola Gay Controversy," Journal of American History 82 (December 1995): 1029-1144;
4. Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian: The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (New York, 1995);
5. Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, eds., History Wars: The Enola Gay and Otber Battles for the American Past (New York 1996);
6. Martin Harwit, An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay (New York 1996);
7. Michael J. Hogan, "The Enola Gay Controversy: History, Memory, and the Politics of Presentation," in Hiroshima in History and Memory, ed. Michael J: Hogan (New York, 1996), 200-32;
8. articles by William S. Pretzer, Otto Mayr, Pamela Walker Laird, and Alex Roland in "Special Section: The Last Act," Technology and Culture 39 (July 1998): 457-88;
9. Robert C. Post, "A Narrative for Our Time: The Enola Gay 'and after that, period,'" Technology and Culture 45 (April 2004): 373-95;
10. and Robert P. Newman, Enola Gay and the Court of History (New York, 2004).
11. Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam(New York, 1965).
12. The historiography of the atomic bomb controversy into the mid-1990s is treated in detail in Barton J. Bernstein, "The Atomic Bomb and American Foreign Policy, 1941-1945," Peace and Change 2 (Spring 1974): 1-16;
13. Barton J. Bernstein, "The Struggle over History: Defining the Hiroshima Narrative," in Judgment at the Smithsonian, ed. Nobile, 127-256;
14. J. Samuel Walker, "The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update," Diplomatic History 14 (Winter 1990): 97-114, and a revised, expanded version of the same article in Hiroshima in History and Memory, ed. Hogan, 11-37.
15. Ronald Takaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb (Boston, 1995);
16. Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (New York, 1995);
17. Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifichultz, "The Legend of Hiroshima" in Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy, eds. Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz (Stony Creek, CT, 1998);
18. Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York, 1995).
19. Other recent works that advance a revisionist view without discussing American motivations at length include Dennis D. Wainstock, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (Westport, CT, 1996);
20. Richard H. Minear, "Atomic Holocaust, Nazi Holocaust: Some Reflections," Diplomatic History 19 (Spring 1995): 347-65;
21. Philip Nobile, "On the Steps of the Smithsonian: Hiroshima Denial in America's Attic," in Judgment at the Smithsonian, ed. Nobile, xviii-xcvii.
22. Lifton and Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, 149-50;
23. Alperovitz, Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 241-2;
24. Wainstock, Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb, 62, 93.
25. For Truman's diary notations, see Robert H. Ferrell, e'd., Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (New York, 1980), 53.
26. Bird and Lifschultz, "Legend of Hiroshima," lxi, lxxv;
27. Wainstock, Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb, 32-33, 126;
28. Takaki, Hiroshima, 33;
29. Alperovitz, Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 232-38;
30. Gar Alperovitz, "Hiroshima: Historians Reassess," Foreign Policy 99 (Summer 1995): 15-34.
31. See also Kai Bird, The Chairman: John F. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment (New York, 1992), 250-52. The Togo cable of 12 July 1945 is located in "Magic" Diplomatic Summaries, 1942-1945, Record Group 457 (Records of the National Security Agency /Central Security Service), National Archives, College Park, Maryland. A somewhat different translation of the same document is printed in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States. Conference of Berlin (Washington, DC, 1960), 1:876.
32. Alperovitz, Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 302-17, 665-66;
33. Takaki, Hiroshima, 37-38, 128;
34. Lifton and Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, 136-40;
35. Bird and Lifschultz, "Legend of Hiroshima," lx-lxv.
36. Barton J. Bernstein, "A Postwar Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 42 (June/July 1986): 38-40;
37. John Ray Skates, The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb (Columbia, SC, 1994), 76-82.
38. Rufus E. Miles, Jr., "Hiroshima: The Strange Myth of Half a Million American Lives Saved," International Security 10 (Fall 1985): 121-40, made a similar argument.
39. Lifton and Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, 180-81;
40. Alperovitz, Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 633-36;
41. Bird and Lifschultz, "Legend of Hiroshima," li-liii.
42. Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman: A Life (Columbia, MO, 1994);
43. Robert James Maddox, Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision Fifty Years Later (Columbia, MO, 1995);
44. Robert P. Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult (East Lansing, MI, 1995);
45. and Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar, Code-Name Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan-And Why Truman Dropped the Bomb (New York, 1995).
46. Another book that defended the use of the bomb as a necessary and proper action but did not directly address historiographical issues is Stanley Weintraub, The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II, July/August 1945 (New York, 1995).
47. Maddox, Weapons for Victory, 83-85, 117-25;
48. Allen and Polmar, Code-Name Downfall, 263-66. Newman departed from other traditionalists by denying that Truman faced a stark choice between the bomb and an invasion. He argued that "it was simply not an either/or situation." Rather, Truman "confronted the necessity of using every legitimate means available to end a global war-not one means as opposed to another."
49. See Robert P. Newman, "Hiroshima and the Trashing of Henry Stimson," New England Quarterly 71 (March 1998): 5-32, emphasis in original.
50. Maddox, Weapons for Victory, 83-84. The Weckerling memorandum is found in Army-Operations, OPD Executive File #17, Item 13, Record Group 165 (Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs), National Archives, College Park, Maryland. A copy of it is available in Reel 109, Item 2581, Marshall Foundation National Archives Project, George C. Marshall Papers, George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, Virginia.
51. Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult, 57-78;
52. Maddox, Weapons for Victory, 109-11;
53. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman, 215-16;
54. Allen and Polmar, Code-Name Downfall, 268-70.
55. Maddox, Weapons for Fictory, 92;
56. Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult, 20.
57. Edward J. Drea, MacArthur's ULTRA: Codebreaking and the War against Japan, 1942-1945 (Lawrence, KS, 1992), 202-25;
58. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman, 212-13;
59. Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult, 1-28;
60. Maddox, Weapons for Victory, 59-61, 70-71, 126;
61. Allen and Polmar, Code-Name Downfall, 222-25; 291-93;
62. Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen, "Invasion Most Costly," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 121 (August 1995): 51-56.
63. See also Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Harry S. Truman and the Bomb: A Documentary History (Worland, WY, 1996), 3-6.
64. D. M. Giangreco, "Casualty Projections for the U.S. Invasions of Japan, 1945-1946: Planning and Policy Implications," Journal of Military History 61 (July 1997): 521-82;
65. D. M. Giangreco, "'A Score of Bloody Okinawas and Iwo Jimas': President Truman and Casualty Estimates for the Invasion of Japan," Pacific Historical Review 72 (February 2003): 93-132.
66. See also D. M. Giangreco, "Operation Downfall: The Devil Was in the Details," Joint Force Quarterly 9 (Autumn 1995): 86-94;
67. and D. M. Giangreco, "To Bomb or Not to Bomb," Naval War College Review 51 (Spring 1998): 140-45.
68. Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conference of Berlin, 2:1267-71;
69. Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York, 1947), 628.
70. Dale M. Hellegers, We, the Japanese People: World War II and the Origins of the Japanese Constitution (Stanford, CA, 2001);
71. John D. Chappell, Before the Bomb: How America Approached the End of the Pacific War (Lexington, KY, 1997);
72. George C. Marshall to the Secretary of War, 9 June 1945, Marshall to the Secretary of War, 15 June 1945, with attached "Memorandum of Comments on 'Ending the Japanese War,'" 14 June 1945, Safe File (Japan after Dec 7/41), Record Group 107 (Records of the Office of the Secretary of War), National Archives, College Park, Maryland.
73. G. C. Marshall to the Secretary of War, with enclosed memorandum, 4 June 1945, printed in Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies (Stanford, CA, 2003), 353-55.
74. Gar Alperovitz and Robert L. Messer, "Correspondence: Marshall, Truman, and the Decision to Drop the Bomb," International Security 16 (Winter 1991/1992): 204-14.
75. United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Japan's Struggle to End the War, typescript, 1 July 1946, in The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan, vol. 1 of Documentary History of the Truman Presidency, ed. Dennis Merrill (Bethesda, MD, 1995), 376-412;
76. Herbert P. Bix, "Japan's Delayed Surrender: A Reinterpretation," Diplomatic History 19 (Spring 1995): 197-225.
77. Marshall to the Secretary of War, with enclosed memorandum, 4 June 1945, in Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 355;
78. "Minutes of Meeting Held at the White House on Monday, 18 June 1945 at 1530," in Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb, ed. Merrill, 52;
79. Alperovitz, Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 359;
80. Weintraub, Last Great Victory, 229;
81. Off the Record, ed. Ferrell, 53-54.
82. Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult, 17-18;
83. Giangreco, "Casualty Projections," 530-43.
84. David McCullough, Truman (New York, 1992), 400-401, 439;
85. Tony Cappacio, "'Truman' Author Errs on Japan Casualty Memo," Defense Week, 11 October 1994, 1, 8-9;
86. Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 350-55.
87. Robert S. Norris, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man (South Royalton, VT, 2002), 426;
88. Barton J. Bernstein, "Reconsidering the 'Atomic General': Leslie R. Groves," Journal of Military History 67 (July 2003): 883-920;
89. New York Times, 10 August 1945;
90. Message to the Men and Women of the Manhattan Project, 9 August 1945, Official File 692-A, Harry S. Truman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri.
91. Stanley Goldberg, "Racing to the Finish: The Decision to Bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Journal of American-East Asian Relations 4 (Summer 1995): 117-28.
92. Barton J. Bernstein, "Eclipsed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Early Thinking about Tactical Nuclear Weapons," International Security 12 (Spring 1991): 149-73.
93. Barton J. Bernstein, "The Alarming Japanese Buildup on Southern Kyushu, Growing U.S. Fears, and Counterfactual Analysis: Would the Planned November 1945 Invasion of Southern Kyushu Have Occurred?" Pacific Historical Review 68 (November 1999): 561-609.
94. Barton J. Bernstein, "Compelling Japan's Surrender Without the A-Bomb, Soviet Entry, or Invasion: Reconsidering the US Bombing Survey's Early-Surrender Conclusions," Journal of Strategic Studies 18 (June 1995): 101-48;
95. Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult, 33-56.
96. Barton J. Bernstein, "Writing, Righting, or Wronging the Historical Record: President Truman's Letter on His Atomic-Bomb Decision," Diplomatic History 16 (Winter 1992): 163-73;
97. Barton J. Bernstein, "Seizing the Contested Terrain of Early Nuclear History: Stimson, Conant, and Their Allies Explain the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," Diplomatic History 17 (Winter 1993): 35-72;
98. Barton J. Bernstein, "Truman and the A-Bomb: Targeting Noncombatants, Using the Bomb, and His Defending the 'Decision,'" Journal of Military History 62 (July 1998): 547-70;
99. Barton J. Bernstein, "Reconsidering Truman's Claim of 'Half a Million American Lives' Saved by the Atomic Bomb: The Construction and Deconstruction of a Myth," Journal of Strategic Studies 22 (March 1999): 54-95;
100. Bernstein, "The Alarming Japanese Buildup," 565-75, 602-9.
101. Barton J. Bernstein, "Reconsidering 'Invasion Most Costly': Popular-History Scholarship, Publishing Standards, and the Claim of High U.S. Casualty Estimates to Help Legitimize the Atomic Bombings," Peace and Change 24 (April 1999): 220-48.
102. Alperovitz and Messer, "Correspondence: Marshall, Truman, and the Decision to Drop the Bomb," 204-9;
103. Alperovitz, Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pp. 648, 661, 662, 665.
104. "Communications," Pacific Historical Review 69 (May 2000): 349-55;
105. Robert James Maddox, "Casualty Estimates for the Invasion of Japan: The 'Postwar Creation' Myth," Continuity 24 (Fall 2000): 11-29;
106. Barton J. Bernstein, "Ike and Hiroshima: Did He Oppose It?" Journal of Strategic Studies 10 (September 1987): 377-89;
107. "Letters to the Editor," Journal of Militay History 63 (January 1999): 243-51;
108. "Giangreco Rebuttal of Bernstein," available at http:/ /members.aol.com/VonRanke/giangreco.html;
109. Maddox, Weapons for Victory, 123-24. One prominent traditionalist scholar who did not criticize Bernstein as a doctrinaire revisionist was Robert Newman. He recognized that Bernstein's scholarship did not fit neatly into any specific category and hailed him as "far and away the most knowledgeable scholar in this field."
110. See Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult, xiv. For an analysis of a spirited exchange of views on the use of the bomb on H-Diplo, an electronic discussion network on diplomatic history, see Barney J. Rickman, "H-Net and the Atomic Bomb: Historians Debate Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the 1990s," Journal of the Georgia Association of Historians 23 (2002): 45-76.
111. Barton J. Bernstein, "Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and Modern Memory," Diplomatic History 19 (Spring 1995): 227-73.
112. J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997), 73-74, 92-97.
113. Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York, 1999), 103-10, 178-96, 214-39, 331-60.
114. Thomas W. Zeiler, Unconditional Defeat: Japan, America, and the End of World War II (Wilmington, DE, 2003), 182. I am grateful to Professor Zeiler for providing me a prepublication copy of his work on the atomic bomb.
115. Peter Maslowski, "Truman, the Bomb, and the Numbers Game," MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 7 (Spring 1995): 103-7;
116. Conrad C. Crane, Bombs, Cities, and Civilians: American Airpower Strategy in World War II(Lawrence, KS, 1993);
117. Kenneth P. Werrell, Blankets of Fire: U.S. Bombers over Japan during World War II (Washington, DC, 1996);
118. Mark P. Parillo, The Japanese Merchant Marine in World War II (Annapolis, MD, 1993);
119. Roger Dingman, Ghost of War: The Sinking of the Awa maru and Japanese-American Relations, 1945-1995 (Annapolis, MD, 1997);
120. Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000).
121. Robert A. Pape, "Why Japan Surrendered," International Security 18 (Fall 1993): 154-201, contended that the "key military factor" in forcing the surrender was not the atomic bomb or the strategic bombing of Japanese cities but the effectiveness of the naval blockade.
122. Sadao Asada, "The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan's Decision to Surrender-A Reconsideration," Pacific Historical Review 67 (November 1998): 477-512.
123. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York, 2000), 15, 487-530;
124. Bix, "Japan's Delayed Surrender."
125. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Cambridge, MA, 2005), chs. 4, 5;
126. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, "The Atomic Bombs and Soviet Entry into the War against Japan: Which Was More Important on Japan's Decision to Surrender in the Pacific War?" Paper delivered at workshop, "The End of the Pacific War Revisited," Santa Barbara, California, April 2001;
127. Barton J. Bernstein, "Roosevelt, Truman, and the Atomic Bomb, 1941-1945: A Reinterpretation," Political Science Quarterly 90 (Spring 1975): 23-69. I am grateful to Professor Hasegawa for providing me prepublication copies of his work on the atomic bomb.
128. Yukiko Koshiro, "Eurasian Eclipse: Japan's End Game in World War II," American Historical Review 109 (April 2004): 417-44;
129. Forrest E. Morgan, Compellence and the Strategic Culture of Japan: Implications for Coercive Diplomacy in the Twenty-First Century (Westport, CT, 2003).
130. Alonzo L. Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman (New York, 1995), 312-37.
131. Arnold A. Offner, Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945-1953 (Stanford, CA, 2002), 47-99. Offner also echoed one prominent traditionalist, David McCullough, in another way. Both claimed that Truman issued an order to use the atomic bomb in a handwritten reply to a message from Stimson on 30 July 1945. In fact, Truman authorized a press release about the bomb at that time. See McCullough, Truman, photograph 10 following page 288, and Offner, Another Such Fictory, 78.
132. Walker, "Decision to Use the Bomb," Diplomatic History, III.
133. Several scholars have recently reasserted views that fall at the far ends of the interpretive spectrum. D. M. Giangreco summarized his views on casualty estimates for readers of American Heritage to defend Truman from critics who claim, he said, that the bomb was used from considerations that "range from a desire to intimidate the Russians to sheer bloodlust." See D. M. Giangreco, "Harry Truman and the Price of Victory," American Heritage (April/May 2003): 13-14. In an article in the Los Angeles Times on 18 July 2003, Peter J. Kuznick weighed in at the opposite end of the spectrum by declaring that Truman decided "to drop two atomic bombs at a point when the Japanese were already militarily devastated and seeking acceptable surrender terms." Kuznick later provided a more scholarly and nuanced revisionist assessment. See Kuznick, "The Decision to Risk the Future: Harry Truman and the Apocalyptic Narrative," in The Second Nuclear Age: Political and Psychological Perspectives, ed. Michael Flynn (Lexington, KY, 2005). Nicholas D. Kristof suggested in a column in the New York Times that an "emerging consensus" agreed with the revisionists that the bomb was "militarily unnecessary." Citing Sadao Asada's work, he argued that "this emerging consensus is ... profoundly mistaken" because the alternatives to the bomb "were worse." See his article in the New York Times, 5 August 2003. Kristof's column was immediately and sharply criticized by Alperovitz; in a letter to the editor. Without specifying his sources, he asserted that American intelligence and "the vast majority of top American military leaders" in 1945 as well as "modern Japanese historians" agreed that the use of the atomic bombs was unnecessary. See New York Times, 11 August 2003.
134. Zeiler, Unconditional Defeat, 183.